Continuing from last week, when Mum sent me shopping with Dad to stock up on inexpensive, everyday red wines, after Waitrose we drove to Tesco in Ilkley.

I had a plan: to buy three bottles each of the excellent-value Cairanne Coteau Brulé Côtes du Rhône 2003 (£5.99), a rich, grenache-based wine with a spicy, bolstering herbaceous edge, and St Chinian Roches Noires 2002 (£6.99), a syrah-mourvèdre-grenache blend that is one of those wines that immediately envelops you in its lush fragrance.

Yes, they were over the fiver-a-bottle budget, but with a 10% discount on offer when you buy half a dozen bottles or more, I thought Mum might let us off. Alas, we were stymied - Ilkley Tesco had neither wine: each is available in just 245 of Tesco's hundreds of stores. How can you find out if they're stocked at your local branch? Well, Tesco told me that it is "not possible to hone down to stock of specific stores, but these stores account for over 50% of sales, so hopefully there will not be too much of an availability issue if people choose a large store".

The selection at the Ilkley branch was so unprepossessing, in fact, that we left without making a single purchase. We headed instead for Booths, the Lancashire-based chain that is something of a favourite with my family. Dad likes the cheese counter. Grandma also likes it - she and her cohorts ensconce themselves in the cafe each week, though she takes umbrage at the fact that if she wants a good old-fashioned milky coffee, she must now ask for a latte. "Why the hell should I? We're in England, not in Italy. And why do they bring it in a big fancy glass?"

Whatever, we made several successful purchases. La Sauvageonne Les Ruffes Côteaux du Languedoc 2003 (£4.99) is a gorgeous, savoury blend of cinsault, syrah and grenache, and was a huge hit with Mum, who claims it "smells of the sea" and has since returned to add a few more to her stockpile. Mas Donis Capcanes 2004 (£5.29), from Montsant, Spain, is made from garnacha and syrah, smelled of cherries and had a bright, refreshing taste with a twist of black spice. It went down perfectly with a salad of figs, English salami, olives and rocket.

We also took a punt on Les Deux Grenache Syrah 2003 Vin de Pays de Vaucluse (£3.29) because of the very cheap price and the classy label. It turned out to be a light-bodied red suitable only for those who enjoy French wine - it's a sort of superior pichet wine, good for salad lunches.

Finally, Ochoa Tempranillo 2001 (£6.99) had the soft, licking warmth of a gentle flame, along with smooth, rounded, strawberry and mellow oak flavours. It'd be good with garlicky chicken, or sizzled steak and green peppers eaten with fajitas. Booths offers a 5% discount if you buy six or more bottles.

Drinks Q&A

I am looking for a firm offering a fair selection of half bottles of organic wine. I've tried a few mail-order companies, but the best they can offer is two.

You're right: the virtuous combination of organic and half bottles is rarely seen. Even Vintage Roots (0800 980 4992, vintageroots.co.uk), the organic specialist, offers only two champagnes, two whites and a red Bergerac in half bottles, as well as a house white and a red by the quarter bottle. The best solution, then, may be to shop in a variety of places. Many wine producers are not openly organic, perhaps for fear that consumers may be put off by the word "organic" on the label and assume that it's just an excuse for higher prices or that farming methods have been prioritised over taste. Instead, they pursue organic or biodynamic (a subset of organic) principles with vigour, only without making a song and dance about it.

A little detective work often unearths the odd good find. Caves de Pyrene (01483 538820) in Arlington near Guildford, Surrey, for example, lists organic wine estates (with a "some certified, some not" caveat) at the back of its list - a little cross-referencing throws up a red and a white from the excellent Mas de Daumas Gassac in the south of France, as well as a Jurançon sec. Adnams in Suffolk (01502 727222) offers two clarets in halves, which, it says, were made with "a preference for organic principles".

These are, I admit, thinnish pickings, and you will do much better if you go for whole bottles (you can always freeze any you don't get through in ice trays, and use it in cooking). Producers to look out for include Chapoutier in the Rhône, Huet in the Loire, Lafarge or Nicolas Potel in Burgundy, Frog's Leap in California. That said, most retailers are knowledgeable enough to point you towards the organic wines they stock, even if they are not obviously marked up as such.